Two Coaches Win Lifetime Wesley Society Awards

Dur­ing the Junior Col­lege Ath­letic Alumni Brunch at Home­com­ing Reunion Week­end this year on Oct. 8, for­mer coaches Bob Andrus and Jim Went­worth were both pre­sented with Life­time Wes­ley Soci­ety Awards which rec­og­nizes indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions who believe in the mis­sion of Wes­ley College.

Robert “Bob” Andrus coached foot­ball at Wes­ley from 1967 to 1987 and con­tin­ues to attend as many foot­ball games as he can, sit­ting in the “Bob Andrus section.”

Andrus led the Wolver­ines to the Tri-State Con­fer­ence cham­pi­onship his first two sea­sons. In 1970 the team won their first Coastal Con­fer­ence cham­pi­onship. They won again in 1976 and appeared in the Ster­ling Sil­ver Bowl in Hutchi­son, Kansas, where the Wolver­ines ended the sea­son as the second-ranked junior col­lege foot­ball team in the nation.

Andrus was named Coastal Con­fer­ence “Coach of the Year” in 1970 and 1976, in addi­tion to being three-time head coach of the
Coastal Con­fer­ence All-Star game. Andrus coached until 1987 and ended with an over­all record of 97–98-3.

Jim Went­worth retired in 2000–2001 after 40 years with Wes­ley College’s ath­letic depart­ment. He served as head coach of
Wesley’s men’s bas­ket­ball team from 1960 to 2000, win­ning 502 bas­ket­ball games. He also served as Wesley’s ath­letic direc­tor for 11 years, as well as coach­ing base­ball two years, track two years and foot­ball as an assis­tant for five years.

Wentworth’s coach­ing legacy includes men­tor­ing and mold­ing young men. Ten of his play­ers went on to coach at the col­lege level and nine coach at high schools.

In 1992, Coach Went­worth and his late wife Shirley were hon­ored when the Wes­ley Col­lege gym­na­sium was renamed the Jim and Shirley Went­worth Gymnasium.

Both Coach Andrus and Coach Went­worth were inducted into the Ath­letic Hall of Fame in 2006, in honor of their extra­or­di­nary com­mit­ment to fur­ther­ing the mis­sion of Wes­ley College.

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